If there’s one thing the broadcast networks should know how to do, it’s copy success: They’ve been practicing for some 65 years.

In the case of ABC's Quantico (Sunday, 10 p.m. ET/PT, *** stars out of four), that means giving this sprawling mystery a structure that will feel familiar to anyone who’s seen How to Get Away With Murder: A story that begins with a crime, and then jumps backward to explain what happened while simultaneously moving forward to follow the investigation.

Throw in the use of students as the investigators, under the prodding of a tough, smart, female mentor, and you have the basic outlines of Murder — absent, of course, Viola Davis, which is a fairly sizable absence.That’s how you do it. To get away with it, however, you have to do it well — and despite a few bumps in the road, Quantico generally does.

One of those bumps comes early, with the show’s inciting incident: a terrorist attack that destroys a major New York landmark. Beyond being a particularly egregious bit of destruction-porn, the event may leave the show with a larger story than it can handle: Such a catastrophe would bring the country to a standstill for weeks, and TV shows are not always good at following up on logical consequences.

Caught in the middle of this attack is Alex (Indian star Priyanka Chopra, in an impressive American series debut), a new FBI agent fresh out of Quantico. Her job is to figure out who did it, and that requires her — and us — to go back over everything that happened during her training stint. And that includes her having sex with a fellow recruit, Ryan (Jake McLaughlin), before the training even starts.

With clever efficiency, Quantico uses a training exercise — discover a secret about one of your classmates — to introduce us to class members and some of their secrets. We also meet the agents in charge of their training: Aunjanue Ellis as Miranda and Josh Hopkins as Liam.

It's an appropriately diverse group, brought to life by generally fine performances, led by Chopra's and Ellis'. The only off note is provided by the usually better Hopkins, who replaced Dougray Scott from the original pilot and plays Liam as weaker and more weaselly. That may have been the director’s choice; it may even be the reason for the switch. But at first blush, it would not seem to be an improvement.

There are times when Quantico feels a shade mechanical, in moments when you can practically hear the plot gears moving. But it accomplishes what the opener of a whodunit needs to do: establish a wide range of plausible suspects and spark our interest in the mystery and the hero. Which means, so far, they got away with it.